


The Longest Shortest Day

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the twenty first of December, the shortest day of the year, and the sea heaved and hurled itself against the old wall, a sludge of deep grey that could be hiding anything in its depths… anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Longest Shortest Day

It was the twenty first of December, the shortest day of the year, and the sea heaved and hurled itself against the old wall, a sludge of deep grey that could be hiding anything in its depths… anyone. 

Doyle stared at it, didn’t feel the wind that pushed and shoved, the occasional bite of rain that spat in his face.

He waited.

Bodie could be down there.

By the quay, to the right of the sea wall, and perhaps a thousand miles away, the lifeboat prepared to launch again, a fresh crew ready to renew the search which had been going on since first light that morning.

Since they’d been told that Bodie was gone.

Even the shortest day was too long for a man to survive in waters like this, even Bodie.

“You’ll get fat eatin’ that lot,” Doyle had said just the night before, “Toad in the hole _and_ spotted dick? All that batter – better not take a bath tonight, you’ll sink like a stone...”

And Bodie had just looked at him, had met his eyes and looked at him, with that laugh he always had deep down, as if the world was just something to giggle at, something to take so lightly…

Would Bodie struggle, he wondered, bending to look over the seawall, closer to the water, to the pull of the sea. Or did Bodie take the world so lightly that…

The water was the same colour that Bodie’s eyes were sometimes, a stormy grey that practically spat salt at you, that sucked you down at the same time, that you could get lost in. What would it be like to be lost in that water? What would Bodie’s last minutes be like? Heavy, Doyle thought, and not because of spotted dick, or toad in the hole, but because he wouldn’t want to give it up, not his Bodie who was born to skim the surface and laugh at it all… The sea wouldn’t let him do that, it would take his laughter and drown it with salt water, with the spite of the salt…

“You know you can’t tickle trout in the Irish bloody Sea, don’t you sunshine?”

In the dying grey light of the day, of the longest shortest day, Doyle stood up and turned around.

Wrong, he’d been wrong… Bodie’s eyes weren’t grey at all, they were a blue so bright…

“Christ Doyle, how long you been out here?” Bodie reached out, tugged at the collar of his jacket, and Doyle looked down at the damp cloth, saw it rimed with salt, from the spray, from the sea spray that sprang lightly with the wind, from sea to shore…

“What ‘appened to you?” he managed, through teeth that had stopped chattering hours ago, that had been so tightly clenched for so long.

Bodie shook his head. “Long story – but we got Durand and his bloody mate, shipped them off to town. I’ve spent half the day on a bloody fishing trawler, the other half trying to convince the Manx bloody police that I was one of the good guys. Did you know they wear pointy _white_ helmets over there?”

Doyle shook his head, pursed his lips and then took a deep breath. Turned out his teeth were chattering after all.

“Come on,” Bodie said more quietly, “I got Cowley to book us into a hotel for the night – told him we’d write better reports that way…”

“Half the day on a fishing trawler?”

Bodie snorted, started tugging him back along the promenade, past the quay where the search was being called off, past the bustle of local police cars and the end of day business of the fishermen and farmers. “I’m just glad it was the shortest day, mate.” He paused. “Got you worried, didn’t I?”

Doyle felt himself thawing just a little more, knew it was partly because Bodie hadn’t let go of his arm, was holding him firmly in fact, as if he was one of the villains about to do a runner.

“A hotel?” he asked, and caught Bodie’s eyes, his sea-blue eyes. “For all night?”

“Longest night of the year, sunshine,” Bodie reminded him. “For all night and the rest of it too.”

Doyle nodded, took a breath of fresh salt air, and smiled. All night.

Behind them, the sea slapped at the wall, reached out to tickle and to taunt it, leapt lightly into the air and danced its own carefree dance. 

 

_21st December 2011_


End file.
